France says D-Day vets bookings will be honored

France says D-Day vets bookings will be honored

PARIS (Reuter): France, anxious to defuse a row over hotel reservations for forthcoming D-Day ceremonies, said yesterday that no World War II veterans would be pushed out of their Normandy hotels.

British and Canadian veterans had pledged to go in with "guns blazing" to enforce their rights. They said authorities had canceled their hotel reservations for June's commemoration of the 1944 landings to make room for foreign dignitaries.

But France denied it had ordered that 200 veterans' hotel bookings be canceled. And it promised no veteran would lose his hotel bed.

Calling an unusual briefing on Easter Monday, a holiday in France, Foreign Ministry spokesman Richard Duque told reporters: "We never planned to requisition the hotels. The bookings which have been made will be maintained."

All guests, including the 200 veterans booked in to the Hotel du Golf in Deauville, would be received "in the French tradition of hospitality".

The Lucien Barriere group, which owns the Golf hotel, said on Sunday the Foreign Ministry had told it to cancel the veterans' bookings to make room for "sovereigns, heads of state and of government".

But a senior festivities organizer told Reuters on Sunday the veterans would be making way for U.S. television crews.

Duque was repeatedly asked how the row could have erupted if nothing had been done to anger the veterans, who have lambasted French authorities for canceling their pre-paid bookings.

"There is no polemic and no problem...There was a certain degree of agitation but the news that got out did not correspond to the truth," he answered.

Several thousand veterans and 15 heads of state and government are scheduled to attend the anniversary celebrations.

Proposal

According to British and Canadian veterans' associations, the French government had proposed to put the veterans up in more than 60 private homes in Normandy.

British former paratrooper Angus Cross, 69, who booked rooms at the Golf hotel for more than 100 Canadian veterans, had complained at the weekend his reservations had been canceled.

Asked how the paratroopers had reacted, Cross said: "They're spitting blood. They're spitting feathers. It's a right dog's dinner but we have a legally binding contract and we're going in guns blazing."

Duque acknowledged the authorities "had at one time thought of transferring the veterans. The local town hall offered to house veterans in private homes but this is not necessary."

Instead, officials of the Interior, Foreign and Veteran Affairs ministries would meet today to seek another way of putting up foreign dignitaries and heads of state.

"France will welcome and honor in the best conditions all those who fought for its freedom," Duque said.

Would the foreign dignitaries be put up in private homes, a reporter asked? "Of course not," was the answer.